The present application relates generally to cooling electrical communications apparatuses and, more particularly, to structures for the passive cooling of electrical components disposed within electrical communications apparatuses.
Electrical components disposed within electrical and/or electro-mechanical systems, such as industrial communications systems, generate large amounts of heat. Such systems may be organized into a wide variety of electrical enclosures (e.g., electrical cabinets, electrical racks, etc.) that have a limited amount of space for the electrical components disposed therein. Indeed, the components disposed within these electrical enclosures may be densely packed within the limited amount of space, thereby leading to various thermal effects, such as the thermal degradation of the electrical components.
Accordingly, various heat dissipation techniques may be utilized within the electrical enclosures to help reduce the thermal effects on the electrical components. In some situations, active techniques related to air-cooling and/or water-cooling may be utilized to dissipate heat within these electrical systems. However, such techniques involve additional components, such as fans, filters, etc., that may increase the manufacturing cost, increase maintenance costs, occupy portions of the limited amount of space, and/or reduce the operating efficiency of the electrical systems. In addition, active cooling techniques, such as air-cooling and water-cooling techniques, generally often make use of moving components, such as bearing assemblies and rotors. As a result, such active cooling techniques may have higher rates of failure as compared to some passive cooling techniques. In particular, cooling techniques relying on air circulation within electrical enclosures are especially poorly suited for mission critical environments, such as power grid substations, where failure of active cooling systems can result in performance degradation or outages of electrical components. Further some electrical components, and in particular, small form factor pluggable devices, are manufactured in accordance with design parameters established by standard setting organizations. Moreover, such electrical components are designed to be removably pluggable and thus cannot be fixedly attached to traditional convection cooling apparatuses, such as, for example, a heat sink.